Special interests

If we are ever going to have a genuine dialog about the economy, labor and income disparity, we need first to recognize the nature of the world in which we live.

We now exist in a multinational economy with a cheap global workforce.

The old adage that making the rich richer will create jobs may still hold true, but those jobs are in China and Indonesia and India.

Secondly, both parties have developed an investment banker mindset that focuses on financial engineering rather than economic infrastructure.

If the economy was driven off the cliff by a cabal of self-serving greedy investment bankers, the path was cut by bought-and-sold politicians and the engine was fueled by the Federal Reserve, whose policies haven’t changed since the crash of ’08.

Now, today, the Fed continues on this path of financial manipulation, buying up the debt of the big banks (over two trillion so far) and maintaining impossibly low interest rates that provide catalyst for leveraged speculation.

The administration, ironically, calls this “stimulus.”

It’s been a week of impassioned speeches and lofty ideals, but business as usual when it comes to our monitory policies.

And here’s the bottom line: So long as we have a White House and Congress run by investment bankers and profiteers, they will remain just that … impassioned speeches and lofty ideals.

The best we can hope for at this point is a GOP that will at least allow basic governance.

The fact is that they answer to the same corporate sponsors that are disinclined to see their investments crash due to Republican intransigence.

But this great divide between the rhetoric and the reality, will be with us so long as what benefits the American people is secondary to what promotes and protects the profits of the few. So long as our government is the servant of the special interests instead of an advocate of the public good, we the people will always be a secondary, and distant, consideration.